Amy has been at Parkland for 21 years and she is an excellent nurse that leads by example! She is very straightforward and means what she says and says what she means! If she sees something that isn't right, she is not afraid to bring it to your attention. This is an example of see something, say something.

Amy serves as charge nurse in the G.I. Lab and if she needs anything done and the staff is not available, she will go and pick up the patients herself along with the charge phone so that she doesn't miss an important call from the doctors, staff or other units to give report on patients coming for their procedures. She goes above and beyond because she doesn't just sit at the desk. By her helping with transport, this prevents us from having a delay with our patients and starting their procedures on time. When working as a regular nurse, in one of our difficult rooms which causes us to need more time with room turnovers, Amy would help assist the staff with cleaning and setting up our procedure rooms getting them ready for the next patient.

She is a very good preceptor and new nurses learn under her directions because she does everything by the book making sure her preceptor is comfortable and confident before coming out of their orientation and is always available to answer questions for them and some of our veteran nurses that needs help with a particular task.

Amy is on the Unit Base Council (UBC) and has been a member since 2016. During this time, she has served as a member (2016-2018), chair (2018-2021), and co-chair briefly because the current chair had resigned from Parkland leaving this position open again but now she is our secretary. Under her directions on the UBC Council, she implemented our first recycling project on the unit making sure all of our procedure rooms have a recycle bin in them. This enables us to put our boxes from the supply vendors, to be put to good use instead of disposing of them in the trash.

Amy is also responsible for continuous communication and commitment with the management of the Sterile Process Department (SPD). She is responsible for implementing the yellow tags that go on the scopes after our bedside cleaning. The tags let SPD know how long the scope had been on the rack because it has to be cleaned within an hour and have called the manufacturer with concerns or updates before bringing it to the staff! She always uses all the resources available for our unit to be in compliance and productive. She is also responsible for the decision-making of the staff checking and verbalizing out loud in our procedure rooms, the expiration date and year of all products opened before inserting them in our patients. This is an important safety issue for the patients and for our staff. She is a strong advocate for the patients and for the staff because she always does what's in the best of the patients.

Amy is a part of the Society of Gastroenterology Nurses Association (SGNA), in which she is a faithful participant in continually educating herself with different up-to-date supplies used in our procedure rooms. She is a Veteran of the Air Force for 21 years where she retired as a Major USAFR. She was a member of the Cow Scouts for 10 years and loves hiking, kayaking, gardening and traveling. Amy is married with 3 grown kids and is now working to get her Texas Master Naturalist for the Elmfork Chapter.

Amy is very active and full of energy and from all of her accomplishments, it doesn't seem she will be slowing down anytime soon. This award would be perfect for her because she is deserving of it and is making Parkland proud to be working in an establishment where you have good leaders who are not afraid to take on new tasks and will fight for what's right and not afraid to lift her voice with encouragement and positivity for us to do better and be better!